tant," said Fanny with her head very high.

Maggie took it again, yet again as wanting more. "Pardon my being so
horrid. But by all you hold sacred?"

Mrs. Assingham faced her. "Ah, my dear, upon my positive word as an
honest woman."

"Thank-you then," said the Princess.

So they remained a little; after which, "But do you believe it, love?"
Fanny inquired.

"I believe YOU."

"Well, as I've faith in THEM, it comes to the same thing."

Maggie, at this last, appeared for a moment to think again; but she
embraced the proposition. "The same thing."

"Then you're no longer unhappy?" her guest urged, coming more gaily
toward her.

"I doubtless shan't be a great while."

But it was now Mrs. Assingham's turn to want more. "I've convinced you
it's impossible?"

She had held out her arms, and Maggie, after a moment, meeting her,
threw herself into them with a sound that had its oddity as a sign
of relief. "Impossible, impossible," she emphatically, more than
emphatically, replied; yet the next minute she had burst into tears over
the impossibility, and a few seconds later, pressing, clinging, sobbing,
had even caused them to flow, audibly, sympathetically and perversely,
from her friend.

XXXI

The understanding appeared to have come to be that the Colonel and his
wife were to present themselves toward the middle of July for the "good
long visit" at Fawns on which Maggie had obtained from her father that
he should genially insist; as well as that the couple from Eaton Square
should welcome there earlier in the month, and less than a week after
their own arrival, the advent of the couple from Portland Place. "Oh,
we shall give you time to breathe!" Fanny remarked, in reference to the
general prospect, with a gaiety that announced itself as heedless of
criticism, to each member of the party in turn; sustaining and bracing
herself by her emphasis, pushed even to an amiable cynicism, of the
confident view of these punctualities of the Assinghams. The ground she
could best occupy, to her sense, was that of her being moved, as in this
connexion she had always been moved, by the admitted grossness of her
avidity, the way the hospitality of the Ververs met her convenience and
ministered to her ease, destitute as the Colonel had kept her, from the
first, of any rustic retreat, any leafy bower of her own, any fixed base
for the stale season now at hand. She had explained at home, she had
rep